Chapter 4
O, then, I see Queen Mab
hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife…
And in this state she gallops
night by night
Through lovers’ brains,
and then they dream of love.
—Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 4
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
English poet and playwright
“Wake up,” Elisabeth shook Isobella again. “You’re sleeping like you’ve been drugged.” She placed her hand over Isobella’s forehead and saw the bottle of Benadryl. “How many of those pills did you take?”
Isobella groaned and opened her eyes. “Two, I think.” She put her hand to her forehead. “My head is splitting. I had the strangest dream.”
“You look like you’ve been ravaged and washed up by the tide. I hope the dream was worth it.”
“It was wonderful.” She remembered strange, vague images of lying in bed. She sat straight up and gasped. “Oh, Lord!”
“Don’t stop there.”
“I dreamed I was in a castle, in bed.”
“Were you alone?”
Isobella put her hand to her head. “I was in bed with a great looking guy, and he wanted to make love to me.” She sighed dreamily. “And I wanted him to.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t recall what he looked like, but I remember thinking he was gorgeous.”
Elisabeth laughed. “Aren’t they all? If only we could swap the duds of reality with the gods of our fantasies.”
“I never realized the mind could be such an erogenous zone.”
“Heavens, Izzy, you’ve got sex on the brain this morning.”
“Yes,” she said, woefully, “and what an unfortunate place to have it.” She grinned impishly.
Elisabeth looked at her watch. “Okay, enough daydreaming. It’s time to bid Romeo good-bye. I’ll go down and order breakfast, and you can join me when you’re dressed.”
“Order me a doppio macchiato in about half an hour.”
“Sex always works up an appetite,” Elisabeth said, laughing as she dodged the flying pillow and slipped through the door.
Half an hour later, Isobella was eating and thinking she was happy Elisabeth was with her. She hoped the trip would draw them closer, for they had never been as close as most twins. Their interests and personalities were quite different. They couldn’t agree on books, movies, clothes, cars, or what constituted a handsome man. Elisabeth was outspoken and impatient. She got to the heart of the matter quickly. Isobella tended to take her time and smell the roses along the way, wandering down unknown paths and sometimes getting lost. About the only thing they had in common was that they were identical twins.
While Isobella daydreamed, Elisabeth paid the tab. Soon they were on their way to the ancient Douglas strongholds of Threave, Castle Douglas, and Beloyn Castle, located in Dumfries and Galloway.
Elisabeth was driving. Isobella wanted to remember the night before, but a vague, greyness prevented her from recalling anything concrete. She wasn’t sure if her experience had been a dream, reality, or both, although she did have bruises and love-bites, which made her think it had been both dream and reality. And that could land her in a mental institution if she dared tell anyone.
She didn’t have a clear image of him. Other than that he was devilishly handsome, no distinct features came to mind. Weren’t his eyes blue? She feared a gloomy state of sadness and hopelessness as her future. Why was he a dream lover instead of the real thing?
“If you’re thinking about Jackson, stop!” Elisabeth said.
Isobella sighed. “There are 8,395,963 men in the state of Texas, and I can’t hold on to even one.”
“Stop thinking about him. Who would take tango lessons to be able to dance with his fiancée on their honeymoon and then run off to Argentina with the dance instructor instead?”
“A jerk!”
Elisabeth nodded. “Exactly. The best thing he ever did for you was to give you the check for five thousand that we used to pay for this trip. Who knows? You might meet someone here.”
Isobella was already drifting off to sleep.
An hour later, she was jarred awake and heard Elisabeth say, “Sorry, I didn’t see that pothole.”
“I needed to wake up.” Isobella looked around. “Are we almost there?”
“Yes. I’m getting excited to see Douglas’s portrait, but I have my doubts about his being a ghost. You’ve always believed.”
“I believed in ghosts when we were kids. Later, I knew it was impossible. Now, I don’t know. A lot of references in those old family documents attest to the fact that he appeared a time or two other than to our four—or was it five—times great-grandmother, Meleri Douglas.”
“What century was that?”
“Eighteenth. Back to your question, I think I want him to be a ghost. I had very strange feelings at St. Bride’s yesterday.”
“Those documents might be based upon myth, rather than fact. In real life, there aren’t many happy endings. Prince Charming’s line died out a long time ago, if it ever existed. I wish I could be more like you, Izzy. You got all the dreamer genes. As for me, I’m a boring reality check. I think Scotland’s getting to me.”
Isobella laughed. “Perhaps that’s why I was so moved when we visited St. Bride’s Kirk. The Black Douglas could be considered the romantic ideal, could he not?”
“Tell me you aren’t going to fall for someone who has been dead for almost eight hundred years!”
“I can’t. We might be related.”
Later that afternoon, after visiting the first two castles on their list, they turned down a narrow, winding road in picturesque countryside and Isobella caught a glimpse of Beloyn Castle. It sat upon rock, as if it rose straight out of the ground. Part of the structure lay in ruins, for over the centuries the owners had never wanted to repair the damage, preferring to leave it as a reminder that the castle had been destroyed by King James. Now, it was a stalwart fortress, with its crow-stepped gable, baronial turrets, and unusual combination of aloofness and warmth.
Isobella studied the massive walls of yellowing stone, with creeping ivy growing in a roofless tower and dangling from arrow slits. Her imagination ran rampant as she envisioned the walls covered with fine tapestries and silken arras and set with fine glass windows. Beneath those rudely cut stones, scattered among the gaunt ribs and splintered timbers of once-vaulted ceilings, lay the stories of great love, lavish feasts, and births and death, of betrayal, torture, mayhem, and murder. She was irresistibly drawn to this tangible link to the past, both romantic and tragic, for it was the home of her Douglas ancestors.
She stretched lazily, for it was a warm, sunny day and the world around her was as splendid as any rendered by an artist’s brush. The sun shone down with an almost liquid brilliance that turned the trees in the distance into a shimmering of great shadows and light, just as it had for centuries. She was awed at the secrets and whisperings the trees could tell of great warriors and battle-weary knights who once rode beneath their noble branches or hid from the English in the shielding embrace of dense foliage.
The road curved and she saw the white fence of a cottage, the tawny gold of a thatched roof, the glazed green of a chestnut tree, and the sparkling blue of the river against the rich brown tones of the road that curled before them. She caught the haunting sound of a bagpipe, the dull humming faint and melancholy. “I wonder who is playing.”
Elisabeth slowed and turned onto the graveled parking area. “Playing what?”
“The bagpipes.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
Isobella rolled down the window. “Hear them now?”
“No.”
Isobella shivered. “It’s freezing in here. Turn down the air.”
“We didn’t rent a car with air conditioning.”
Suddenly, Isobella felt very cold and very frightened.